I did any custom textile work anyone would give me, hunched over a single secondhand sewing machine at my kitchen table after the children were asleep, my eyes burning, the ocean of orders never quite catching up to the ocean of bills.

But I was good.

That was the thing Grayson had never bothered to notice in all our years together — that the woman cleaning offices at night had a real and specific talent, and that talent, given even a sliver of room, grows.

The single machine became a corner of the apartment.

The corner became a small boutique studio.

The studio, over seven years, became a high-end commercial textile firm with clients across California, New York, and Texas, and a name that meant something in rooms Grayson would have killed to be taken seriously in.

He never knew any of it.